Well, Roy Moore wants to bring back slavery and he's about to be elected to the Senate, and I'm sure there's already a few Republicans on the Hill who'd agree, so I'm sure we're on our way to it being doable!

I mean, I'm not gonna lie. In Trump's America 2017-18, I would only slightly raise one eyebrow in mild surprise if the GOP wrote a bill to formally reintroduce direct legal slavery.

"By granting rich white landowners the right to keep workers whom they do not pay at all and also whip sometimes (most times) and rape, (all times, but even more times if they're under 18) poor white people will see more jobs open up for them due to trickle down"

For-profit prisons are already formally direct legal slavery, it's in the 13th Amendment. That cheap produce in Walmart, the labor to Build The Wall™, the reason AT&T's call center workers actually have American accents... For a while the cheese in Whole Foods was made by prison slaves until they got called out and switched to ethical sources because of the PR.

Yeah, I know that prisons are slavery. There's a reason I've been banging on about prisons for the better part of my adult life.

When the year 2200 rolls around, and people look back at what we did, the same way we look back at what X time period did, and talk about how insanely bad whatever they did was and how widely accepted it was, what people in 2200 will say about us is "Prisons."

And yes, Prisons are more insane than anything else we are doing systemically right now. Possibly even if you combine several of the other things we are doing systemically right now.

Wanna make a rape joke? You can't put that shit on TV. Unless it's in prison.

On a related note, Florida's got a petition circulating for a ballot initiative to restore voting rights to felons who have served their sentences. The website appears to be at floridiansforafairdemocracy.org, though it appears to be down at the moment. secondchancesfl.org has a copy of the petition that looks like it's legit, though I haven't spent much time verifying that.

Don't know if we've got any Florida Men here, but if you're registered to vote there or know somebody who is, pass it around.

Anybody heard about the West-Coates spat yet (and that's not a clever pun)?

Ta-Nehisi Coates recently released a book on the Obama presidency titled We Were Eight Years In Power. Meanwhile, over at Harvard, a very prominent leftist classist academic, Cornel West, (who has argued with Coates before) decided he disliked the book so much that he was going to write a very stern lettera column in the Guardian excoriating Coates and his book.

I looked up We Were Eight Years In Power a bit and to be fair at first glance it does seem, well, a bit hagiographic. Perhaps uncomfortably so. The praise for Obama seems to be rather effusive, and many of the man's real flaws are being glossed over. But West's column seems shockingly and unnecessarily hostile - it's a direct and very personal attack, all out of proportion. Most tellingly, it's been endorsed by the likes of Richard Spencer. Ew.

In the wake of all that, Coates deleted his twitter account. Can't say I blame him.

All I can think of is that these are the exact sort of people who should be trying to get to get the fuck along. It's enormously depressing that identity vs race vs class debates continue to tear the left to pieces, and that even many of the people leading those debates are demanding everyone take sides. It keeps being mentioned that record numbers of people are registering to run as Democratic candidates. I can only hope that at least some of them know how to play peacemaker.

Until then, I'll just be here, banging my head against this desk, with Rodney King's famous "Can't we all just get along?" repeatedly running through my head.

Spencer is a shit-stirring Nazi who does whatever will inflame things the most. You cannot assume sincerity.

Coates has been an apologist for Obama's failures and violent excesses for a long, long time, and West's column is FAR from the first criticism of him for doing this.

And the book is a lot more than just a hagiography of Obama - it's a centering of race to the exclusion of everything else, which is what West went after him for. In the Briahna Grey article quoted in that tweet, she points out:

Of course, racism is central to understanding Trump’s election, as it is to diagnosing what ails American politics more generally, but Coates takes it a step farther, casting those who focus on the role economic anxiety played in 2016 as disingenuous “apologists” who only emphasize class in order to avoid their own complicity. He characterizes such thinkers as indifferent to the “monstrous incarceration of legions of black men,” the “destruction of health providers for poor women,” the “effort to deport parents,” excessive police force, and the punitive treatment of black schoolchildren — in short, those policy concerns that are inextricably racial in nature.

West pretty well nailed it.

のほも is such a good word?? the concept is kind of hard to fully get across in translation, but basically it means a feeling of pure, deep, platonic affection, and i think thats beautiful

Friday wrote:Yeah, I know that prisons are slavery. There's a reason I've been banging on about prisons for the better part of my adult life.

When the year 2200 rolls around, and people look back at what we did, the same way we look back at what X time period did, and talk about how insanely bad whatever they did was and how widely accepted it was, what people in 2200 will say about us is "Prisons."

And yes, Prisons are more insane than anything else we are doing systemically right now. Possibly even if you combine several of the other things we are doing systemically right now.

Wanna make a rape joke? You can't put that shit on TV. Unless it's in prison.

SCP Foundation would be a better place, at least they have a thing against unnecessary cruelty.